Starting a business in this digital era without the right small business marketing tools can be detrimental to your sales and business growth. Not only will you not reach your target audience, but your workflow will also be slow and ineffective.
It is no news that everything has gone digital and small businesses are not exempted. With the increase in social media users like TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram, and online purchases, small businesses must take advantage of harnessing the power of digital marketing software to build loyal customers, boost their social media presence, drive traffic to their websites and who doesn’t want that for their small business?
Entering any industry and establishing a reputable, well-known brand can seem overwhelming in the beginning especially when there are big brands with a long history that you have to compete with. Not to mention the fact that many people struggle to trust a newly launched business in their first year of existence.
We all know referrals are great for businesses and it is a powerful marketing strategy that is great for every business. However, waiting for happy customers to start recommending your products or services to others will not help you meet your business goals and sales target at the end of each quarter.
All this shows that small businesses absolutely need all the help that they can get. Are you ready to discover the secret tools successful businesses use? Keep reading as Unify Wizards dives into the top digital marketing tools that will help grow your small businesses
What are Digital Marketing Tools for Small Businesses?
Digital marketing tools are online applications that help businesses and brands create effective strategies, reach their target audience, and sell their products or services. It also uses digital communication to help brands attract, engage with their customers, and retain business online.
You have probably heard about or used these tools without knowing them as they include any app related to marketing. From social media and email marketing to search engine optimization, keyword tracking, and website management, the list goes on and on.
Every small business owner needs a digital marketing tool to have a successful online presence and post high-quality content regularly. The good news is that most of these digital marketing tools have both free and paid plans at affordable prices, so you don't have to worry if you are on a tight budget.
The Best Small Business Marketing Tools
Mailchimp
Mailchimp is known as one of the best email marketing software with amazing features and cost-effective prices. The app helps brands manage and create personalized email marketing campaigns for their clients, customers, and other interested parties.
Its free plan can be used to build a landing page, retarget ads, map customers' journeys, and email list segmentation. Its paid plan provides advanced features that include the following.
- Multivariate testing
- Comparative reporting
- Advanced segmentation
- 24/7 access to email and chat support
- SMS marketing and API
- Automated transactional emails
Mailchimp also provides other marketing tools for their users. These include social media templates, pre-designed themes, landing page templates, and website templates, making it one of the best marketing tools for startups.
SEMrush
For small businesses that want to improve their online presence and drive traffic to their website, SEMrush is all they need to achieve their goal. With features like competitor analysis, market research, keyword research, and social media tools, SEMrush helps improve your SEO strategies and lets you know what is working for your brand.
The uniqueness and SEO statistics provided by SEMrush have made it a very popular search engine optimization tool in the world of digital marketers, and content creators. Not to mention its ability to find and display backlinks, overall traffic, top-performing pages, and keywords rank of any public website.
As a small business owner new to digital marketing, you can start with SEMrush's free plan to navigate the tool and get used to its features and functionalities. You can also opt for the paid plan to fully enjoy other features and optimize both your website and online presence.
Buffer
There are many social media platforms to post on and keep the audience engaged. But you cannot do it all by yourself simultaneously unless you want to burn out or lose focus. That is why you need one of the best social media management tools to tailor your posts to all your platforms.
Buffer is an affordable tool designed to get the job done by scheduling, publishing, and analyzing all your social media content across all your platforms. It has a user-friendly interface, and effective features have made it a great tool for small businesses that want to manage their social media presence more efficiently.
Buffer also has an Artificial Intelligence feature that not only creates new and engaging content and captions, but it also repurposes your old content. For small businesses with not more than three social media platforms, the free plan is a perfect fit for you. Anything above that will need the paid plan to function efficiently.
HubSpot
HubSpot is one of the best and easiest customer relationship management software to use for small business. Its contact management features segregate your business contact and develop an effective content strategy. It allows businesses to track what people do on their websites. This includes how long they stay, the section they go to the most, and what they click on.
HubSpot also lets businesses integrate all their data, schedule calls, manage tasks and track emails sent to their customers, making it easier to track sales and close more leads.
HubSpot's extensive features make it a perfect fit for small businesses that want to integrate their marketing, sales, and service functions into a single platform.
FeedHive
Repurposing your content to keep your new followers updated with your business journey is very crucial. As your business grows, your new followers should have a full picture of your brand's journey and what it stands for. Also, your long-term followers need a reminder of your business goals and vision. FeedHive is one of the best marketing tools for startups to achieve that.
Its AI features recycle your published posts and adjust or correct your posts for maximum engagement. It allows you to have a content calendar and categorize your content based on topics. For example: Q&A on Monday, inspirational content on Wednesday, and a reel video on Friday.
With FeedHive, you can also create your social media posts and schedule them and it will be automatically posted at the right time.
FeedHive is not a free tool, but new users are offered a seven-day free trial, and the paid plan starts from $19 per month with four social accounts and AI Writing Assistant.
Canva
As a small business, your social media page must be aesthetically pleasing to captivate your audience. This means you need a good editing app for your video and product display. Not to mention a template to create your Carousels and reels. All these are achievable with the Canva app even if you have zero experience in design.
Canva also has pre-design templates that you can use to design your presentations, social media photos, and videos. Its AI-powered tools allow you to generate and edit images using only text prompts.
Canva's free plan gives you limited access to features like stock photos, and AI-powered design tools. But the paid plan gives you unlimited access to more design templates, stock photos, and AI tools.
TopicRanker
With TopicRanker, small businesses can know keywords they can rank for.
The tools do not focus on keyword search volume or keyword difficulty like others. Rather, it shows keywords with weak spots and problems on the Search Engine Results Page.
For example, TopicRanker checks missing keywords, and outdated content from your competitors. This tells you keywords to use in your blogs to outperform your competitors. Its AI features suggest blog titles, content outlines, and improve meta descriptions.
Google Analytics
Do you know Google Analytics is one of the free small business SEO tools that help you monitor everything that happens on your website? With Google Analytics, you can know everything from identifying user behaviour and measuring engagement to tracking your keyword rankings, measuring traffic, and optimizing Google campaigns.
Constant Contact
Email marketing is an important part of sales funnels that have proven to yield success over time. However, sending emails to a wide number of customers can be overwhelming for a small business with other tasks at hand.
Constant Contact is designed to help you with all your email marketing. Its features such as email templates, lead generation tools, and third-party integration allow you to put all your work in one place.
Constant Contact's user-friendly interface makes it very efficient and simple to use. It also has features that assist you with social media marketing, real-time metrics, and engagement reporting.
Grammarly
Grammarly is without a doubt the only grammar checker tool fully loaded with most of the editing features you need. From spelling, engagement, and clarity to word delivery, paraphrasing, and plagiarism checker, the list goes on and on.
The newly added AI feature adds a few editing features such as options to identify gaps in writing, improve writing, research ideas, and pick out the main point.
The free plan offers basic writing suggestions and 100 GrammarlyGO prompts/month While the paid plan gives you unlimited access to all the features of the tool.
The Bottom Line
Digital marketing is not something any business can single handedly handle without using tools. These small business marketing tools help streamline their marketing efforts without emptying their budget. Not to mention some of them have free plans or free trials to work with.
Unify Wizards is a digital marketing company in the United Kingdom with a team of experts that help you choose small business marketing tools that best fit your business. We are dedicated to creating and maintaining the best online presence for your brand.